of Lawrence and the capture of the Chesapeake.
Gibbs states that while on board the Chesapeake the crew previous to the
action, were almost in a state of mutiny, growing out of the non payment
of the prize money, and that the address of Capt. Lawrence was received
by them with coldness and murmurs.

After the engagement, Gibbs became with the survivors of the crew a
prisoner of war, and as such was confined in Dartmoor prison until
exchanged.

After his exchange, he returned to Boston, where having determined to
abandon the sea, he applied to his friends in Rhode Island, to assist
him in commencing business; they accordingly lent him one thousand
dollars as a capital to begin with. He opened a grocery in Ann Street,
near what was then called the _Tin Pot_, a place full of abandoned women
and dissolute fellows. As he dealt chiefly in liquor, and had a
"_License to retail Spirits_," his drunkery was thronged with customers.
But he sold his groceries chiefly to loose girls who paid him in their
coin, which, although it answered his purpose, would neither buy him
goods or pay his rent, and he found his stock rapidly dwindling away
without his receiving any cash to replenish it. By dissipation and
inattention his new business proved unsuccessful to him. He resolved to
abandon it and again try the sea for a subsistence. With a hundred
dollars in his pocket, the remnant of his property, he embarked in the
ship John, for Buenos Ayres, and his means being exhausted soon after
his arrival there, he entered on board a Buenos Ayrean privateer and
sailed on a cruise. A quarrel between the officers and crew in regard to
the division of prize money, led eventually to a mutiny; and the
mutineers gained the ascendancy, took possession of the vessel, landed
the crew on the coast of Florida, and steered for the West Indies, with
hearts resolved to make their fortunes at all hazards, and where in a
short time, more than twenty vessels were captured by them and nearly
_Four Hundred Human Beings Murdered_!

Havana was the resort of these pirates to dispose of their plunder; and
Gibbs sauntered about this place with impunity and was acquainted in all
the out of the way and bye places of that hot bed of pirates the Regla.
He and his comrades even lodged in the very houses with many of the
American officers who were sent out to take them. He was acquainted with
many of the officers and was apprised of all their intended movements
before the